It is the common practice to manufacture pillowcases, bags and the like by sewing the hem, side and bottom seams in a series of successive manual operations with separate sewing machines and operators being used for each operation. This manual fabrication of pillowcases and the like requires a large number of sewing machine operators thereby adding to the labor costs of producing the pillowcases and requiring a large amount of space to position the separate operators and sewing machines.
In order to reduce the labor involved in forming pillowcases and to increase the production rate, several different types of apparatus have been proposed for automatically producing pillowcases and the like. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,126,848 and 4,388,879 disclose apparatuses for automatically producing pillowcases from tubular textile fabric. Similar types of apparatuses are disclosed in U.S. Patent Nos. 3,227,118; 3,227,119; 4,214,541; and 4,224,883 for forming pillowcases from a continuous open width textile fabric. While the apparatuses disclosed in these patents have been effective to reduce the labor costs involved in producing pillowcases and the like, they have not been completely satisfactory from the standpoint of the consistent production of identical pillowcases in which the open hem end, the side portion and the bottom are perfectly aligned and stitched together in such aligned condition.